It's week two already!It's quite late today. Today marks week one of Franklin and Marshall and Day one of my soon to be permanent schedule for Fall Semester. I spent the morning at Millersville helping students develop ideas with their first project. They are in the process of making maquettes in foil and scrap wood. It was nice to talk to them and get to know them better. My strategy has been to stake out a table and bring busy work or a sketchbook so I can work with them. I try to keep it light and conversational because I know that some personalities will shut down if I'm just another authority figure. I also don't want to outshine the professor.

During my joint work time, I made a list of Spanish phrases gleaned from memory and from Esmeralda Santiago's book "When I Was Puerto Rican." It's a fantastic memoir about her experience moving from Puerto Rico to New York City in her teens. I love her writing. It's subtle and has a nice blend of fantastic realism and realism to it. She also expertly weaves spanish phrases and really captures the way bilingual speakers tend to move effortlessly in and out of spanish and english. I'm thinking of using the phrases I gleaned as transfers in some of my sculptures.

After class I went to a brief artist talk. The ceramics professor (Zimra Beiner) gave an informal talk about his work that is currently on view in the Sykes Gallery. I enjoyed his work for it's interesting take on the relationship between the pedestal and the "sculpture" that stands on it. I also met some of the other EARs and had a nice talk with some of the other professors. I'm feeling more comfortable with the Millersville crowd. Below are some photos I snapped to capture the progress I'm making on my Atabeira sculpture. I found an old mask a friend of mine had cast in college and used it to make a solid mold that I can experiment on. I also managed to get into the woodshop and cut down some shapes to screenprint on. I also went out and bought some materials to use for other sculpture ideas I have. That's all for now!

Last post I mentioned a little bit about Atabeira (or Atabey). Today I want to explain a little bit more about her significance and a little about what I've learned about Taino myth and culture. Atabeira has many names. this is significant because Taino Indigenous peoples are a group that were prevalent across several islands. Today it is agreed (for the most part) that the Taino's migrated from Venezuela (or in other opinions some part of the very northern border of Latin America). They moved to Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica and the surrounding islands that are now part of these countries. They are a subgroup of the Arawak Indigenous peoples and are sometimes referred to as the Indigenous inhabitants of the Greater Antilles just to cover all ground. The commonalities of these groups despite migration to a wide range of islands lies in their pottery, similar petroglyphs referencing gods and goddesses and documents written by early Spanish colonists. The problem with really identifying these people lies in the fact that in the early 16th century, colonialism began to unravel the Taino fabric fairly quickly leaving behind only traces of their culture often misconstrued by the Spanish settlers. Today, anthropologists, ethnographers, archaeologists and many others are taking these documents often fraught with mistakes to task. For a very long time the general consensus was that the Spanish killed off or "integrated" through forced marriage the indigenous people of Puerto Rico. There is proof, however, that some of the Taino may have lived far longer than previously assumed when they were simply forced to live in hiding. Many early documents regarding Taino myth were written from a perspective that belittle they're worship of Cemi's. Spanish colonists believed that the Taino were child-like and savage, completely dismissing the significance of they're practices. Today, however, we have the sophistication to this significance and understand that perhaps all along the Taino were much more aware of their surroundings than the Spanish.

I will try to be brief here. I'm on a bit of a time crunch this evening but I had a really great two days with the residency. I'm also going to be taking courses through Drexel (online mostly) for a Masters in Arts Administration. I'm feeling the pressure but it's resulting in an intense drive to be more organized and deliberately use my time wisely. Yesterday I met the advanced class. They're a great group of students who range from those that have only taken Sculpture 1 to those that have taken every class MVU has to offer in the arts. They're obviously passionate and rearing to get to work. We'll be welding on Tuesday and talking about the figure tomorrow evening. The Sculpture 1 class is still working on building a vocabulary so it's a bit slow moving to get to know them and see what they're really capable of. Today I sat in on a mini super casual crit with Sculpture 1 and began reading the material I've collected. Below is an image of some of the books I'm working through to help inform my work.

Today is day two and I will be meeting the Advanced Class this evening. I'll probably write about that tomorrow after my second day with the beginning class. As I've mentioned, I'm working on a new series involving embroidery, photography and various printmaking media. I'm referencing symbols and icons from my Puerto Rican and Dominican backgrounds in this series (see here!). It's called Lazos de Sangre which translates to bloodlines. Here I'm actively in the process of exploring my heritage but deliberately not really addressing my family proper. I feel that it is important for me to sort of reach back as far as I can into the history of both countries to better understand how that culture has morphed into what it is today in the States. It's difficult because growing up in a Latinx household, it is easy to assume that everything your family does is somehow influenced or similar to what happens on the island but in reality everything that happens on the mainland, down to the Spanish we speak is vastly different than the island. So I'm in a position as a second generation of Latinx living in the states that 1) speaks better Spanglish than Spanish, 2) Has never visited Puerto Rico (though I have been to DR) 3) Is considered by much of my family (in the most endearing way) the least Latinx of all Latinx. I'm white-passing, don't have an accent of any kind and am still learning about what it means to be Latinx. Granted I'm well pretty well versed in the history of both Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico but still my book smarts are somehow deemed less than the smarts others in my family gleaned from being on the island or living in the Barrio or Boogey Down Bronx. It's a hard road to navigate and I'm finally learning to express these somewhat suppressed feelings of cultural confusion through my artwork. In the process I'm reading tons of books and articles regarding Santeria, Taino Mythology, Feminism and the Latinx community, and the list goes on and on. A lot of the 2D pieces I've started are self-portraits I've shot and then manipulated post-printing. They've evolved tremendously and are very organic in nature. I tend to let them dictate what they need. I generally have an idea of what's going to be in the piece as far as which motif I'll use however, more often than not I'll add things on a whim or because it just feels right.

This is the first attempt I ever made to directly address identity and Latinismo in my artwork. It took about a year to really feel comfortable doing this.

Here you can see the repetition of motifs from the second piece. I also have begun to incorporate the vejigantes masks more explicitly.

This one actually sold. It is the second and most hasty attempt at the topic. I made it in about two days and something just clicked with it. It was shown at Sunshine Art + Design in Lancaster, PA.

This piece is the first to use something other than faces. It is the first to also draw from Taino symbolism in the stitching patter on the breasts. This will be on view at Sunshine Art + Design in September!

Greetings! I've decided that I should begin a more formal documentation of what I'm working on due to the fact that I will be embarking on several exciting ventures in the next few weeks. I also am hoping to better verbalize what I do for a living and share my experiences with my friends, family and colleagues.

Today marks the very first day of my term as an Emerging Artist in Residence with Millersville University. I need to digress a little before I proceed to explain what, exactly, this residency entails:

After graduating from Franklin and Marshall in 2013 I took two years to think seriously about what my next step will be. The majority of work on this site is either from my senior thesis or from these years outside of academia. My thesis, comprised of both sculpture and drawing, explores various themes branching out of feminism and the body. I chose to work from and create "deviant" bodies in order to better appreciate the body I inhabit as well as promote a more varied, diverse and non-villifying series of figurative sculpture. In the end I was satisfied with the work but disappointed in how little I was able to research and articulate my discoveries. Granted I was completing a double major at the time and probably had no time left (or energy!) to really dive into these vast topics.

In the two years since graduating I've worked at local museums and at my alma mater (as a photography tech (also I'm still working here! Huzzah!)), I've interned at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and worked at proving to myself that I can create outside of academia. In this time I've learned to play. Playing has become such a big part of my studio practice now and if there is only one thing I've learned in these gap years it has to be that playing is imperative. I'm a very anxious, driven and ambitious person. Somewhat oxymoronic in the sense that I tend to panic if I don't have enough work on my hands but also panic if I have to much. Coming out of college I thought that pushing myself to my utmost limit was what I was supposed to do. I thought that I would continue to thrive in the panic. I would create best in the panic. But I'm not a pleasant person in the panic. Also the panicking, hasty decisions quickly devolve from 'amazing feats of genius' to 'why the hell did I do that'.

So fast forward to year two. After having four jobs and trying to re-gain my bearings in my family life (I live with my parents. It's both a blessing and sometimes a curse) I realized that this is an unhealthy way to live. I also realized that I was getting very caught up in trying to make something perfect that I forgot why I liked art so much. I became a machine trying to pump out assignments and check off a laundry list of "concepts" though there really was no point or necessity to do so. I quit my jobs at the museums I worked at (long, arduous, personal story I may delve into later...or never) and focused on playing more. l decided to play with ideas I've had in exploring identity politics. I dove into researching topics regarding my Latinx and Hispanic background I've had an enormous interest in but could never find the time to devote. Through this recess of sorts, I started to really turn my focus away from trying to make 'intriguing,' pretentious work and began to focus on myself. I started to use the old mantra from my creative writing classes: "Write what you know."

And here we are today. I was accepted as an Emerging Artist in Residence at Millersville University late Spring/early Summer of this year and have begun serving as such today. This summer was fruitful. My newest series "Lazos de Sangre" is a real deviance from what I had been working on. It's more bold and really confronts personal issues I've had with my identity as a young Latinx female identifying person in the United States. It feels big and scary but in all the right ways. I am the sculpture EAR at MVU so a lot of the 2D work produced this summer will inform and perhaps show up in the sculptures I'm hoping to produce during my term. I actually had a really great conversation with my mentor (Line Bruntse) about my project that was very encouraging. It's really nice to have a serious conversation about the series since I've had the pleasure of exhibiting pieces from it three times now and all with very positive results but no real critical conversations. Exhibitions rarely produce honest constructive feedback. All too often people will either be overly nice because they are respecting your 'spotlight' or too harsh (probably bitterness because of said spotlight).

As far as the nitty-gritty aspect of the residency, I will be volunteering 10 hours per week outside of my personal 'making' time. I am expected to assist in cleaning the studios, maintaining a safe working environment and facilitating critiques with both beginning sculpture and advanced sculpture classes. There are two of us sculpture EARS working with Line this year and we share a studio space within the arts commons. The studio functions as a meeting place, creation station and haven for the two of us to escape to. For the sake of clarity, we don't live in the studios, we just work on our art there. We also have access to any of the other facilities we might need both in the art building and on MVU's campus at large. I also get the opportunity to learn any skills that I might want to use in my work alongside MVU students. At the end of the year I will participate in an exhibition with the other Artists in Residence (those in painting, printmaking etc.) where we will have the opportunity to discuss our experience and our work with the public.

And so concludes my introductory post. I will be updating weekly (or more...or less) on what I'm up to during this residency and posting photos of what I'm working on. Stay tuned!

about

This blog functions as a space for me to articulate what goes into making my artwork. As it goes, artists are supposedly notorious for being verbose and confusing writers that often come off as pretentious, pompous asses. That hopefully won't happen here. I intend to be as informal as possible. If you've made it this far I probably don't have to warn you that some of this might be NSFW because nudity is known to literally, and irreversibly, burn corneas.*